Joker: Folie à Deux

This movie routinely confounds expectations. Usually, that’s a recipe for something interesting, and in this case I think that mostly works out here—although it is plain why some viewers might not have been particularly enchanted with this result. The execution of this flick's fantasy conceit is uneven; some of the songs are almost apologetic intrusions into a standard narrative, while others come onto the screen as full-blown set pieces à la traditional musicals. That conveys the sense that the filmmakers really didn’t know what to do with their ideas, or at the very least that they weren’t convinced of their own concept. You have to wonder, then, how such a concept was likely to go over with viewers. At least the performances are good; both Phoenix and Gaga acquit themselves well in their roles, although one suspects that the overall experience might have been better if his character had been more the dynamic Joker and less the relatively passive Arthur Fleck. In the end, this is a different, and a mostly welcome, odd spin on the comic book genre—not awful by any means, engaging throughout (I was never bored through the running time), and at least somewhat creative and ambitious, though perhaps not really all that necessary in the final analysis. If you’re going to take the stage, you should open with a strong joke, then finish with something equally good. This movie mini franchise got the first half of that right, but offers a closer that’s good for a chuckle, not a roaring mic drop.